Swarm Weekend in Atlanta

Atlanta was buzzing this Labor Day weekend with several events scattered around the city. Large events means a concentration of people, which can equate to Foursquare Swarms. Atlanta has seen plenty of venues swarm this summer, but has never seen 4 venues swarm simultaneously like it did on the night of Thursday Sept 2nd. The venues were the Atlanta Airport (which is in an almost constant state of swarm these days), the Georgia Dome for the first ever Georgia State University football game against Shorter University, Turner Field for the Atlanta Braves and New York Mets game, and the centralized Dragon*Con venue.

Midday on Saturday Sept 4th, there was a repeat in Atlanta of 4 simultaneous swarms with the Dragon*Con centralized venue, Dragon*Con Parade, Bobby Dodd Stadium for the Georgia Tech vs South Carolina State game, and the Atlanta Airport. The state had 5 simultaneous swarms when you include the University of Georgia vs Louisiana-Lafayette University game at Sanford Stadium in Athens. If anyone can confirm other swarms around that timeframe we could have had more than the 5 statewide.

Labor Day weekend marked the annual return of the country’s largest science fiction and fantasy convention, Dragon*Con. With the convention being spread out across 5 different hotels (Hyatt Regency, Marriott Marquis, Hilton Atlanta, Westin Peachtree Plaza, & Sheraton Atlanta) it was highly likely a Super Swarm was going to be impossible given the venue dillution of check-ins. A centralized Dragon*Con venue was placed in the middle of these hotels to aggregate check-ins and ended up seeing a constant swarm all weekend around the 125 level. The best bet for a Super Swarm looked to be on Saturday morning during the Parade when the city would see an influx of non-conventioners plus many of the Dragon*Con attendees who couldn’t get to town for the first day of events on Friday. Hope for a Super Swarm looked lost when someone created a separate parade venue that split away a large number of check-ins from the centralized venue. At one point during the parade, the centralized venue had 200 folks and the parade venue had 100 checked in. Fortunately, after the Dragon*Con parade ended folks took off to attend events and the check-in count at the centralized venue began to slowly rise.

At approximately 3:20pm on Saturday Sept 4th, the centralized Dragon*Con venue reached the coveted 250 check-in level and Super Swarmed (eventually flirted with the 300 mark). This was not only the first Super Swarm unlocking in Georgia, but it also marked the first time it has been unlocked in the Southeast.

The only thing that could have made this Swarm weekend in Atlanta any better would have been a Dragon*Con specific badge from Foursquare like there was for Comic*Con. Hopefully, there will be one next year!